Archive for October 25th, 2012

Situated in the Antelope Valley, along the Western edge of the Mojave Desert, the Mojave Rivers Ranger Station is designed for administrative and fire personnel from the USDA Forest Service Mojave Rivers Ranger District. Both client and architect aspired to achieve a building appropriate to its context and to the function of the agency. In keeping with the Forest Service’s principles, the ranger station is designed to convey the agency’s roots as an institution with “an ethic of conservation and stewardship, a close tie to the land, and an orientation of service to current and future generations.” The result is a facility whose form and aesthetic is largely shaped by its desert site and climate.

The project “Schlump ONE” is located directly at the underground station Schlump in Eimsbüttel district in Hamburg. The original administration building from the 1950s and 90s was gutted, renovated and expanded, and has now been converted into an office building with four possible rental units per floor. The existing data processing center in the courtyard has been transformed into a private university and expanded to include a new building. The building’s facade has been completely renovated and redesigned to form a single unit that freely interprets the original building’s 1950s linear design. The organic formal language of the facade is continued in the design of interiors. The project is embedded in a sophisticated, open space planning design with oversized tree sculptures.

At beginning of 2011, Kokaistudios was invited by one of the leading developers in China, OCT Shanghai Land, to lead a thorough restoration and renovation project of a historically significant warehouse on the North side of Suzhou Creek in Shanghai. The warehouse; the early 20th Century Ewo Packing Factory warehouse building; is the first building to open in the new large scale OCT urban re-development project SUHE CREEK designed by Foster+Partners and where the 4th Bvlgari Hotel will be located. The building now serves initially as the Project Showroom, Sales Center and VIP Reception Venue as well as housing the studios for two of China’s most prominent contemporary artists, Yan Peiming and Liu Xiaodong. It will be part of the riverside commercial space where international brands will be located in the future.

Accesolab is a company with 20 years of experience commercializing sophisticated equipment for research laboratories. For the design of their new corporate offices in Santa Fe –a mayor business area in Mexico City- they team worked with usoarquitectura to develop a project to outstand their leadership.

The E.J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University is a glass and steel ‘academical village’ for business education. The courtyard site plan and building forms are contextual— recalling the sloped roof pavilions and arcaded courtyards of the adjacent historic campus. To illustrate a forward looking aesthetic that embodies the mission of the school, which is to generate business innovation in Louisiana and the Gulf region, these traditional architectural forms are constructed of contemporary materials and details. The pavilions are clad in ceramic coated translucent mirror glass and the rotunda is clad in a bronze solar screen resulting in a composition of forms that are ephemeral apparitions of the original campus. This composition reflects the strong heritage of the campus while looking to the promises of the future.

To design from the limited shelf space, to allow the coexistence of people, flowers and equipment, and at the same time maximize the storage space that doesn’t conflict with the movement of clients and staff, we came up with this layout.

The centre and its facilities adaptation proposal to current health needs maintains and powers the building’s original values: pavilion type of pleasant scale plotted in a garden setting, interesting spaces between pavilions, friendly scale, well-proportioned courtyards: a good relationship between the patient and the environmental and particular setting: best relationship between nature and architecture.

This primary school designed for 828 pupils is the first modern school that was built from scratch in Vilnius in the 20 years since Lithuania’s independence. As the surrounding urban fabric has no cohesive urban concept, the new school was intended to give the area an unequivocal focal point. It is also intended to serve a broader function for the wider community after school hours and over weekends.

The University of Washington desired a facility to accommodate growth in molecular engineering; respond to the evolving interdisciplinary nature of teaching and research;and fit within an area of campus that is home to recently revitalized facilities, as well as traditional campus architecture.